The Moving Canine: Recent Episodes
Mari Valgma
A canine fitness training podcast with a twist. Instead of talking about strength and endurance training, we focus on coordination and movement skills. We'll also explore the fascinating world of human dog interactions to discover how our training choices and skills affect our dogs' ability to develop physical, fitness related skills. Podcast host is Mari Valgma, CPCFT
Do you need separate exercises for doing body awareness work with your dog? Or can you build balance, precision and good coordination into everything you do, just by tweaking the way you train? Find out in this episode of The Moving Canine.
Beyond Dog Sports program link: https://training.themovingcanine.com/bds
Most dog sport enthusiasts believe that dog training happens only with the dog. That we, the trainers, cannot improve our skills without having our dogs in the training session. But believing that dog training is a skill only learnt with the dog, not practicing handler skills separately, alone and without your dog first, could actually slow down your progress, cause a whole lot of frustration problems and take away the joy in training - the main thing you’re looking for when spending time with your dog.
Listen to the whole episode to find out what to do instead!
I bet every single one of us has, at some stage of the dog training journey, heard the saying that “You should be ready to do lots and lots of repetitions to nail this exercise”. I recall having heard this several times, especially linked to precision behaviors like a running contact or training position changes for obedience… This belief is so often ingrained into our brains that we don’t even think there may be something wrong with it… But the truth is - learning should happen fast. We are talking about within a couple of repetitions kind of fast. Here I don’t mean you should get a stellar running contact performance within a couple of repetitions… But you should definitely see progress in your desired direction very, very quickly and in every single training session. If you don’t then there’s something wrong... In this episode learn the essential elements you need to have in place to move forward quickly in your training instead of being stuck in the repetition land!
Last 2 weekends I had a chance to participate in a Science Camp with Alexandra Kurland. While there were many interesting and eye-opening topics, I most enjoyed the small pieces of information on balance.
It looks like we've both discovered that when the handler mechanics is really clear and we use behavior loops in the training (the topic of the previous episode), then our learners develop good balance all by themselves!
Now, how exactly does that work? Find out in this episode of The Moving Canine.
Being aware of the training concepts is crucial for everything we do with our animal learners. And, in fact, knowing how to use different concepts deliberately can help us not only improve the training experience in general, but also help to develop excellent physical skills within the sports training exercises.
Meet behavior cycles! A super powerful training concept that helps you train more efficiently and allow good motor skill development.
Over the years I've seen very many dogs who look extremely uncomfortable while doing even the most basic exercises. And it wasn't because they had health problems. It was because they had learnt that them looking for balance was bad and not desirable during the training. How could something like that happen? Find out in this episode of The Moving Canine.
Want your dog to have a long and healthy sports career? You need to do some fitness training for that, right? Not only! There are other elements to your training that actually affect your dog's ability to navigate between those nasty potential overuse injuries... Learn more in this episode of The Moving Canine!
Here's the link to the Beyond Dog Sports program mentioned in the episode: https://training.themovingcanine.com/bds
In this episode you will learn:
- how is your dog's mindset linked to his movement, speed and precision during sports
- how to get your dog to perform with confidence and focus on the obstacles
- how do your training choices affect your dog's ability to move with awareness and control
- find out the most common mistake in dog training And lots more!
Here's the link to the Beyond Dog Sports program mentioned in the episode: https://training.themovingcanine.com/bds
Ready to get perfect, frustration free training sessions with your dog? Want focus, speed and precision in dog sports while also prolonging your dog's career? In this episode I'll be sharing the first part of my free 3-part video workshop "Performance Through Clarity". You will learn: - how to avoid frustration behaviors like barking and sniffing in your training - what are The Flow and The Red and which one you need for success - why does knowing where to look for the reinforcement matter to your dog - the No1 training tip to keep your dog in the focused and engaged mindset during training And lots more!
The free workshop will be available until the 5th of February. Better hurry ;) Join me now for this 100% free workshop by clicking this link: https://training.themovingcanine.com/clarity-part2
One of the key goals of any fitness trainer is to help reduce the risk of injuries in our canine companions. I don’t know a more torturing feeling for me as a pet parent than making my dog hurt through activities and sports that I’ve chosen for her. To me, reducing the risk of injuries is one of the key motivators for fitness training. Yet, strengthening work is only one part of it. If we don't pay attention to the other end of the equation, we undermine our work. Listen to the full episode for the whole story.
Your dog needs coordination skills in every activity he's engaged in. Yet it's one of the most overlooked areas of dog sports training. We often see the word "coordination" in a fitness program or puppy school program. But the reality is often just a couple of exercises for body awareness. It's because coordination can be a bit tricky to train, especially when we don't know it's even a thing! Time to change that. Coordination training has some HUGE benefits. Find out what they are in this episode.
Balance really is a very complex topic, encompassing so many different elements and areas of physical training. In dog physical skill/fitness training we often see the term "balance" being used mostly in the context of working on unstable surfaces. Where the dog has to put some effort into maintaining his body position while the surface underneath him is wobbling. But this just a tiny little part of balance. The reality is way more complex. Most of the time our dogs need to have good balance during movement! And, as it comes out, not only to stay upright and not fall over...
Link to the Equiosity episode #128 mentioned: https://www.equiosity.com/single-post/episode-128-helene-lawler-pt-2-what-is-balance
While I do think that information I'm sharing is quite essential for growing as a dog trainer, this episode is actually about another podcast. It talks about balance in animal training and relates to philosophies of my own training and The Moving Canine in so many ways I cannot even describe. It is, of course, the newest Equiosity episode with Hélène Lawler.
Here's the link to the episode I talk about: https://www.equiosity.com/single-post/episode-127-helene-lawler-pt-1-a-dog-trainer-s-journey-into-equine-balance
Imagine giving your dog a cue during training, a cue that should indicate a well known behavior to your dog. Instead of happily following that cue with lightning speed and wagging tail, your dog delays responding to the cue. He may turn his head away, go sniffing or scratching, show lip licking and then, finally, slowly follows the cue… That’s the kind of effect poisoned cues tend to have.
In order to move well, the nervous system needs to have very high quality information about the body. Knowing where different body parts are and how they move depends on body maps - areas of the brain representing different body parts. In order to grow and create connections in the body maps, the brain needs information from movement. Listen to the episode for the whole story.
Have you ever wondered why fitness trainers encourage slow over fast movements during exercises? One of the reason is described with the Weber-Fechner law: the brain's ability to register subtle differences in the muscle engagement decreases with more movement (more stimuli). The same subtle changes go unnoticed in fast movement exercises. Slow movement exercises are essential for the body to learn making adjustments to muscle engagement during the physical activities.
If you’d like your dog to become better and faster learner who is motivated and engaged during training sessions, then improving handler mechanics is one of the key things to work on. You don’t have to spend more time training your dog in order to get rid of stressing high or low behaviors like sniffing, walking away from the training session, barking, frantic movements. Having clear mechanics and reinforcement delivery will almost always result in a better training experience to you and your dog.
There are many, many different factors affecting the arousal level. There are factors beyond our control. But the most important one is something we can actually change…
That is being clear in our training where and how the reinforcement will be delivered. Having clear reinforcement delivery systems in place is actually the foundation of working on coordination skills!
When we look at the arousal states from coordination and movement point of view, which arousal state looks like the good place to be? It’s actually written in the descriptions of the arousal states, where The Flow is linked to controlled and deliberate movements with high accuracy and low latency. And The Red is linked to frantic movements with low accuracy and high latency. Coordination and movement skill training is actually all about being in The Flow mindset. We can’t develop movement skills while our dogs are in The Red. The mindset and ability to develop movement skills are intricately linked together. Let’s see how that happens!
Note: My understanding of arousal originates from Hélène Lawler and her amazing course “Optimal Arousal” at FDSA. Thank you Hélène for all the amazing knowledge you've given me!
The story of why I started working on movement exercises with my dog Mr Bo. The story includes some poisoned cues created by the lack of physical skills. It also talks about how being in control of the movement can be reinforcing to our learners.
In the future episodes we'll talk a lot about coordination. And movement skills (that happen to be pretty much same thing!). How does coordination training differ from common canine fitness programs? Why do our dogs need separate coordination training? And what benefits does coordination training have? You'll find out in this episode of The Moving Canine.
It may happen that when teaching new behaviors to our dogs, we would like all the repetitions to become as similar as possible. Especially when training something for competitive sports.
Let's look at this from the movement perspective. What does good movement skill tell us? Does good movement skill mean there is no variation in the specific movement over the repetitions? Or is it the opposite - in order for the movement to be skillful, it needs to have variation in it?
In this episode we are going to discuss if fitness training is only for the sports dogs. Or if maybe it's crucial in every training program as without it... we would be lumping?!
Welcome to The Moving Canine podcast! It all starts here, the journey of exploring movement and coordination. And discovering how arousal state or handler mechanics affects our dog's fitness skills.
I am Mari Valgma, CPCFT. I have been teaching canine fitness courses since 2017. And I'm super excited to start this new journey. With you!